Picture tag: Su Elliott

40th anniversary reading of Jane Arden’s play Vagina Rex and the Gas Oven followed by a roundtable discussion at Toynbee Studios with original cast members Sheila Allen and Victor Spinetti, and the production’s director, Jack Bond. Jane Arden’s play was the first British theatre work to come out of the Women’s Liberation Movement when it was staged at Jim Hayne’s Drury Lane Arts Lab in  February, 1969. The event has furnished us with new and exciting documentation relating not only to the work of Jane Arden and the original production of Vagina Rex, but also that of the Arts Lab, […]

BFI launch of a box set of three films by Jane Arden (1927-1982): Anti-Clock, The Other Side of the Underneath and Separation available on DVD and Blu-ray. Jane Arden, playwright, actress, film director, is mentioned in a number of Unfinished Histories interviews, notably those with Sheila Allen (Vagina Rex and the Gas Oven) and Natasha Morgan (The Other Side of the Underneath) and the BFI used material from those interviews for the box set of films and commissioned Susan Croft to write the essay ‘Chasing Jane’ for the accompanying booklet.

An event celebrating the work of Peter Oliver, who ran Oval House from 1961-1974, and Kate Crutchley, the venue’s programmer in the 1980s. The first half of the evening paid tribute to the life and work of Peter Oliver (1926-2007) through a series of speakers who knew him personally. The second half took the form of a live interview with Kate Crutchley and Susan Croft using video footage from the Unfinished Histories series:  Women’s Theatre 1970s and 1980s. The event included an exhibition of material focusing on Unfinished Histories interviewees and their work alongside material on Oval House in the […]

Launch of the completed Women’s Theatre 1970s and 1980s series of interviews, including a panel discussion with project interviewees, Lily Susan Todd and Eileen Pollock with freelance director Indhu Rubasingham and Lisa Godman, Artistic Director of Soho Theatre, and chaired by Carole Woddis. This was followed by audience discussion on women’s theatre now and then. There was an accompanying exhibition of posters, flyers, photos and scripts relating to the work of the interviewees and the companies and/or venues they worked with or ran. Copies of the series of interviews were officially handed over to the British Library’s National Sound Archives, […]

A one-off event at the Theatre Museum in April 2006 – a live oral history interview with alternative theatre director Michele Frankel, followed by a panel discussion with women active in feminist theatre in the 1970s and 1980s. The panel comprised Susie Orbach, Gillian Hanna, Jenny Harris, Sheryl Crow and Michele Frankel reflecting on their early work and examined how their experiences then continue to inform their work now. The panel discussion is available for listening at theatrevoice.com. The event was co-produced by Michele Frankel, Angie Milan and Susan Croft. Carole Woddis wrote a review of the event for the New Statesman […]